29/II/24 - 33cl bottle from Geers (Oostakker), shared @ home, BB: XI/2023, N°2878/5532 (2024-136)

A little cloudy blond to gold yellow beer, big solid creamy off-white head, stable, adhesive, leaving a nice lacing in the glass. Aroma: pretty floral, fruity, green grapes, some melons, some lychee, more fruity, apples, yeasty, nice! MF: soft carbon, medium body. Taste: soft acidity, fruity, peaches and apricots, white grapes, a bit lemony. Aftertaste: slightly sweet, fruity, lychee, a bit malty, kiwi, bitter touch, very yeasty, banana, banana peel, meh, rather boring, this beer lacks some character and definitely some barrel flavours.

Tasting with tderoeck and Marina

33cl bottle, BB 11/2023, bottle# 743/5532.
Dorée pâle, col épais blanc crémeux - léger gusher à ouverture.
Arôme donne de suite de belles effluves de Chardonnay avec des des notes rappelant le miel avec presque un nez frais de léger café et une subtile pointe de framboise et cerise fraîche. Petite amertume noble de la base de Goliath arrive en rétro-nasal.
Palais est frais, complexe avec un caractère barrique bien ficelé, effet de la barrique apportant un fruité de raisin, petite touche melon doux-mielleux, avec une fine amertume en retrait. Petite sécheresse de la barrique, pointe de tannique en fin de bouche avec une base de Goliath qui se fait presque oubliée.

One of (so far) two barrel aged variants of Géants' Goliath (previously Gouyasse), this one aged on dry white Burgundy wine barrels from the Hautes-Côtes de Beaune in the so-called Côte-d'Or department in eastern France. Comes from the same kind of stylish bottle as its Hautes-Côtes de Nuits counterpart, but with green label. Gusher, but manageable with very slow and careful opening. Moussy, egg-white, crackling and thinning, irregular, cobweb-lacing, relatively stable but eventually breaking head on a misty straw blonde beer with somewhat greenish tinge and strings of sparkling here and there. Distinct aroma of sweet dessert wine and sweet ripe grapes, dusty old wooden planks, oaky 'vanilla' touch but subtly so, cooked apple, iron (very strongly and unambiguously confirmed by the 'hand test'!), fried zucchini, warm pear juice, chamomile, Betterfood crumbs, lemonbalm, honey, unripe kiwi, grass, dust, moist white pepper, half-cooked parsnip. Fruity, juicy onset, lots of grape flavour from the white wine running through it all but not concealing the beer's natural fruitiness of pear, pineapple, apple and some light banana, lively carbonated, supple body; pale malt sweetishness slenderly distorted under grapey fruitiness with the wine effect becoming ever more tart, though nowhere sour, adorned with ongoing apple and pineapple esters, clove-like spicy phenols, something very 'dusty' (old polyester rugs even) returning retronasally as well as that iron becoming more detectable. The actual barrels manifest themselves in a tannic, drying, very woody way, including some vanilla-scenting oakiness retronasally but most of all, supporting that dryish, tart wine effect that balances out the beer's basic sweetness; I even get a bitter grape peel accent lingering after swallowing. Hops remain quite soft and earthy, the wine and the barrels really do a good job here (as with the other barrel aged Goliath variant), but no matter how much they have shaped this beer, they do not complete hide its metallic, straightforwardly sweet, grainy nature. Clearly Géants knows how to apply wine barrel ageing (or had beginners' luck) - now they have to learn and apply it to the right beer... They own Ellezelloise, perhaps Hercule would be a better contender than their own Goliath? In any case this version convinced me less than the other one, but that comes down to personal taste as well, of course.